The History of Buddhist Thought c22.16

c22.16

Śāriputra, who has already reached Nirvāṇa, is astonished at the teaching, and fears that it may be Māra speaking, but soon recognizes that he will become a Buddha. The Lord revives in him the knowledge that he once made the vow of a bodhisattva, and promises its fulfilment. Śāriputra wishes the error of his own disciples to be removed, but the Lord says that he uses different devices according to different temperaments. Just as a man, if his children were in a burning house, might tempt them to come out by offering them different kinds of toys, bullock-chariots, goat-chariots, and deer-chariots, but when he has enticed them out he gives all of them splendid bullock-chariots; so Buddha offers the three careers with the degrees of concentration and release, and other methods of the disciples, but they are all superseded by the Buddha-career. Those who despise the teaching of this sūtra will be reborn in hell and other places of suffering. The sūtra is not to be recited to foolish people, but only to those who are striving for complete enlightenment (ch. 3). It is thus useless for the disciples of the older teaching to protest and say that the Nirvāṇa ideal was taught by Buddha. Their opponents admit that it was, but only to people too foolish to understand the higher doctrine.